Prescient prognosticationsScience News has reliably covered most of the biggestscience stories of the last 90 years. But also tuckedaway in the magazine’s pages have been many signsthat SN reporters were on to something before it wasmainstream.s 1936 women may one day borrow an egg fromanother woman, have the egg fertilized in a testtube and then incubate the egg in their ownwombs (4/11/36, p. 228).s 1943 water hyacinth (below) is becoming aserious river pest in the united states (2/13/43,p. 102). in 1968, SN writes that the plant “nowclogs waterways of southern states and costs mil-lions a year in dredging bills” (10/26/68, p. 423).s 1943 a dream refrigerator is envisioned that willopen its doors at the touch of a switch, dispensecool water, make ice cubes automatically and havea separate freezer—one that even defrosts itself(3/27/43, p. 198).s 1956 weather forecasts may soon start comingwith probability estimates for the predictions,such as “a 60 percent chance of rain” (5/19/56,p. 307).s 1957 a new field called gnotobiotics, “the studyof animals in a germ-free or germ-controlled envi-ronment,” is described (1/26/57, p. 62). today,gnotobiotic animals are used in labs around theworld (6/18/11, p. 26). — Erika Engelhaupt